“It's nerve-wracking to be given the opportunity to accept the Olympic torch relay,” Anatoly Pakhomov said. “This means that we will have the great responsibility of organizing the next Winter Games in 2014. We cannot let down the Russian nation. We have to make the next Olympiad better than anywhere else.”

The Sochi Olympic Organizing Committee has sent a delegation of over 150 executives to Vancouver to see how things should be run at the Games. They have been carefully following all processes, particularly the logistics of thousands of sport fans moving from one arena to another, the transport system and the accommodation, which all worked very well in Vancouver.

Dmitry Chernyshenko, Sochi 2014 Olympics Organizing Committee CEO, particularly stressed that the great atmosphere and hospitality of Vancouver are the main things to duplicate in Sochi.

“Joy, happiness, happiness and openness, everybody smiling and having fun – that is exactly what we want to achieve in Russia, but of course with a Russian touch,” he said.

Indeed, Russians are very disappointed with the results of the Vancouver Winter Olympics, which became the worst for Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, but now there is a great determination to put things right in four years’ time.